Social Movements in Thailand
Pasuk Phongpaichit
Paper presented at International Conference on Thai Studies, Nakhon Phanom, January 2002
Since around 1990, we have seen an outburst of demonstrations, protest marches and new organizations by people of various walks of life. In 1978 there were 42 demonstrations and protests marches, rising to 170 in 1990 and to 988 in 1994 (Prapat: 34, 35, 39) These protests have not been just one-shot events. In most cases participants have organised into a movement to demand their rights, or to fight to protect the environment and their livelihood on a long-term basis.
In 1999–2001, I organized a research project on social movements in Thailand, funded under the Thailand Research Fund’s medhi wijai awuso programme. The project covered eight movements.[1] The sample was not ‘representative’ in any scientific sense. But it includes many of the most prominent movements, and it indicates something of the variety. This upsurge of political activity cannot be assigned to one group, one grievance, one cause. The movements are both varied and complex. Collectively they mark a significant change in our society and politics. The aim of this paper is to understand something of that change. Let me first summarise the eight studies.
Kritiya Atchwanitkul and Kanokwan Tharawan study the movement among women to gain full control over their bodies and sexuality, using four specific cases: the struggle for the rights of women to abort; the campaign for the right to choose a woman as a lover; the women’s movements and AIDS; and the fight to eliminate violence against women. Voravidh Charoenlert deals with women workers’ struggle for health and safety in work places. Nalinee Tanthuvanit and Sulaiporn Chonvilai study the roles of poor rural men and women in fights against dam projects which destroyed natural forests and fish breeding grounds and thus took away their means of livelihood, as well as dispersed their communities. Sayamon Kaiyunwong, Atchara Rakyutitham and Krisada Bunchai study the northern hill farmers’ movement to win rights to manage local natural resources and to maintain their cultural identities. Praphat Pintoptaeng and Anuson Unno cover the movement by small-scale fishermen in southern Thailand to protect the coastal environment. Maneerat Mitprasat examines the slum dwellers’ movement for housing rights and for participation in urban development. Nualnoi Treerat and Chaiyos Jirapruekpinyo trace the rural doctors’ movement against bureaucratic and political corruption in the public health ministry. Narumol Tapchumpon and Charan Ditthapichai focus on the movement for the new constitution of 1997 and the aftermaths.
These studies range from the northern hills to the southern coasts, from hill minorities to educated civil servants, from local issues about natural resources to national concerns over constitutional principles. The nature of the peoples’ struggles, their novelty and variety, have motivated this research project. The social movements are not only the expression of discontents of the present, they also represent the collective wishes of large numbers of people. ‘Society itself is shaped by the plurality of these struggles and vision of those involved.’(Escobar and Alvarez 1992: 5)
Social movements are controversial. Some political analysts have argued that modern social movements are a dangerous delusion: because these movements emphasise civil society rather than class, networks rather political parties, local action rather than the capture of the state, they result in a futile populist strategy with no hope of success against the entrenched power of the internationalised capitalist state (Brass, 1994). Defenders have responded that such criticism simply ignores contemporary realities. Class has become much more complex in the globalised, post-industrial world (Veltmeyer 1997). States are unlikely to be overthrown by old-style movement parties because modern states have impressive resources and broad foundations of tacit support. Social movements have arisen precisely because of these characteristics of the modern world, and we need to reconcile to these facts rather than cling to an idealised past (Omvedt 1993; Byres 1995).
Several thinkers have rediscovered the Gramscian discussion of hegemony as a way to reconcile social movements with leftist thinking. Whereas old-style political movements sometimes succeeded in capturing the state, they then often failed to disturb deeper hegemonic ideas such as the domination of one group over another, the exclusion of minorities, the necessity of hierarchy, or the privileges of an elite. Social movements, by contrast, mount direct attacks on such hegemonies from the base of civil society.
Social movements and NGOs have also been criticised, for retarding the development of a political party system which would truly represent the society, and particularly the urban and rural mass. By deflecting people’s interest away from the establishment of political parties, these critics suggest, social movements and NGOs cede this realm to old elites and business gangs who directly represent only a minute proportion of the population. Social movement activists respond that party politics are not the only type of politics, nor necessarily the most effective for the mass of the people given current structural conditions.
In this paper I first give a brief summary of the worldwide theoretical debate on social movements, which has developed since the 1960s. Then the learning from past debates is analysed, followed by a discussion of the main features of recent popular movements in Thailand, and ending with a conclusion and dedication.
International debates on social movements since the 1960s.
Social movements are simply collective actions—many people acting together. The phrase ‘social movement’ has taken on new meanings since the 1960s when it was first used to describe anti-war, anti-nuclear, student rights, feminist, gay, and environmentalist movements. Some writers dubbed these campaigns as ‘new social movements’ because participation cut across class lines and included a large number from the educated white-collar middle class. The ‘new’ tag distinguished these movements from movements which were class-based, such as trade unions, communist parties, and socialist movements. The ‘social’ tag was used because the movements were not directly political. They had no aim to capture or overthrow the state. They tacitly accepted the political framework of liberal democracy. Some wanted to establish different cultural identities, or make the society accept different ways of life (gay, lesbian). Many were about the quality of life, and the assertion of the rights of the individual.
The US debate
Political scientists argued that these movements demanded new theoretical approaches, different both from the Marxian paradigm of class, and from mainstream theories about interest groups and political recruitment. The first attempts at theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s were in the US.
These attempts focused not on why the movements took place (this was seen as being self-evident), but on how they were organised, and why some were more successful than others. The resource mobilization theory purported to show that the success of a movement depended on the resources available (people, money, allies), and the ability to mobilise these resources (by persuasion, organization, networking). Resource mobilization theory was wholly about the strategy to make a movement succeed in demanding a change in government policies or legislation. It focused on political action, and paid no attention to civil society.
A variant of this approach became known as political process or political opportunity theory. This approach analysed the success or failure of movements in terms of the ‘opportunities’ available. If the government is strong and committed to repression, then the political opportunity is small and the movement likely to fail. And vice versa. Analysts in this school paid less attention to the ‘resources’ available, but concentrated on the interaction between the movement on the one hand and the state or other forms of established power on the other.
Western European debate
Debates in Western Europe began a little later than in the US, in the 1970s. From the start, the debates differed from those in the US. This reflected the big difference between the two continents in political history and in the traditions of political theory.
The subject of debate was essentially similar—namely new movements about the environment, women and sexual identities. But instead of focusing on strategies and on the requirements for success or failure, the European debate focused on why these non-class-based movements arose.
The early theorists came mostly from Marxist traditions of political economy. They were concerned that Marxist analysis of social movements, which stresses the importance of consciousness, ideology, social struggle and solidarity, seemed inadequate to characterise and explain the new movements. They argued that theories which stress the primacy of structural contradictions, economic classes, and crisis in determining collective identities were inappropriate to understand movements which did not appear to have a class base, and did not seem to be related to any crisis or structural contradiction.
However, the European theorists were not at all impressed by the US theories of resource mobilization and political process. They asserted that present day collective action is not confined to negotiations and strategic calculations to gain political access. Rather, movements involve issues of social norms and identity, and the struggle takes place in the realm of civil society rather than in the realm of politics.
The prominent European theorists such as Alain Touraine and Jurgen Habermas linked the upsurge of new social movements to the failure of the democratic system in post-modern society to guarantee individual freedom, equality and fraternity. In the view of these theorists, the state has become more subject to the market, and democratic processes are being crushed by the growing power of authoritarian technocracy. The power which people once enjoyed through their role in the production process has been eroded by technology and managerial technique. The main socioeconomic role of individuals is not as workers but as consumers, and in this role they are manipulated by the technologies of media and markets.
For Touraine, as the technologies of state control, of mega-corporation economics, and of mass communications advance, so the liberty of the individual is diminished (Touraine 1995). For Habermas, the expanding structures of state and market economy colonise the public and private sphere of individuals, which he calls the lifeworld. This lifeworld includes the domains in which meaning and value reside—such as family, education, art, religion. So private life becomes steadily more politicised by this double encroachment (Foweraker 1995, 6).
For Habermas, social movements are defensive reactions to protect the public and the private sphere of individuals against the inroads of the state system and market economy. Similarly, Touraine sees participation in social movements as the only way in which the individual can recover liberty. For both Habermas and Touraine, the main role of social movements is the mobilization of actors’ or ‘subjects’—their terms to refer to human beings in their full role as free and creative members of a pluralistic society, as opposed to victims of state and market domination.
Social movements in the European theory involve a process of self-awareness to create human and social identities, which are free of the domination of the technocratic state and the market. But the creation of these identities is part of the process of a social movement, not its ultimate goal. The social movement is a collective form of action to contest the abuses of political and economic power, and to change the political and market institutions in order to produce a better society. Social movements come into conflict with existing norms and values. As put by Cohen and Arato (1992, 511), ‘collective actors strive to create group identities within a general identity whose interpretation they contest’.
Both the US and Europe are advanced industrial societies with established democratic systems, yet the analysis of social movements in the two continents has differed very widely. Foweraker explained this difference by reference to the historical context. Western Europe has a history of social democracy, welfare states, institutionalised trade union movements, and strong corporatist traditions linking trade unions with the state. European theorists try to explain the appearance of a new type of social expression by reference to shifts in society and culture. They conclude that the new social movements are concerned with the construction of new social and political identities in opposition to the power of market and state.
In the US by contrast there has been no tradition of social democracy, no trade union corporatism, and no powerful labour movement. Social movements are thus explained not as a consequence of social or structural change, but simply as part of the political manoeuvring whereby groups mobilise resources to gain political representation and to realise social changes. The US theorists are not interested in why social movements arise. They concentrate on why some succeed and some fail.
Debates in Latin America
The debate on social movements in the developing world surfaced first in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Latin America—as a result of the close historical connections between Europe and that region, and because of the heavy American involvement there. Latin American theorists found that many of the insights of the western debate were useful because many movements (women, gay, environment) were either concerned with similar issues, or were linked in increasingly international arenas of debate. However, the Latin Americanists also found that local movements, which arose in the region in the 1980s had many features which required extension or adjustment of the western theories.
First, the early movements in Latin America were primarily urban movements resulting from problems of rapid urbanization due to industrial development, the capitalization of agriculture, and resulting shifts from rural to urban areas. These urban social movements often revolved around the demand for public utilities, or access to land and water. The movements gained momentum in part because of the crudeness of the government reaction. Thus the movements themselves were affected by the repressive policies of the state and the suppression of traditional forms of organization, such as trade unions and political parties.
Second, older forms of organization and agitation such as trade unions and agrarian movements did not disappear. But many new social actors come onto the scene, such as women, teachers, students, ethnic groups, as well as environmental movements.
Third, the movements often involved struggles to establish rights. These included rights to livelihood, rights over the body, rights to land, and ‘the right to have rights’. Such movements were not so much expressions of civil society, but rather something much more basic: attempts to create or recover civil society in the face of state power, dictatorial repression, and exclusionary hegemonies. (Foweraker 1995, 6).
Fourth, these movements were not divorced from the political process, but often by necessity overflowed from civil society into the political realm. Often movements were locked in contest with authoritarian regimes. As part of their strategy, they demanded democratization, political participation, and constitutional change. While some movements appeared to have the post-modern, non-class-based, networking form of the European model, others were much more obviously class-based and directly political.
Fifth, these movements were much more likely than European versions to be concerned with material issues of access to and control over resources such as land, water, and the means of livelihood.
Sixth, while European theory situated new social movements as an extension of the traditions of liberal individualism, many social movements in Latin America were based in communities, leveraged community solidarities, and demanded community rights. Foweraker, for example, studied how the Chiapas movement drew on customary practices within the community as part of network building, and evolved demands for the rights of Mexican Indians as a community.
Finally, in Latin America the success rate was not impressive. Repression by the state was tougher and more effective in disrupting and preventing any meaningful success.
Latin American theorists adopted some of the vocabulary and approaches of the western literature, but found that they confronted some important differences. At the close of the 1980s, theorists advanced some tentative conclusions. First, they argued that the question of the class base of social movements was an empirical matter. In the advanced world, many movements were either middle-class or cross-class. But in Latin America, most were attempts by the poor and disadvantaged to gain basic rights and improve their economic standing. Second, they proposed that the success or failure of movements was related not simply to the local strength of the state, but also to the neo-colonial framework and the international backing for local state power. Touraine’s observations about the domination of state system, market economics, and mass communications had to be modified to stress the extreme nature of this domination in the situation where the power-base of state, market, and communication media was remote from the local context and hence even more difficult to oppose.